Leftover Cheese & Onion Bread

Now I know this isn’t exactly the most suitable recipe for any New Year dieters out there, but my excuse is I haven’t started mine yet. I’m still working my way from the excesses of choccies, biscuits, mince pies, christmas cakes, salami and cheese that are still lurking each and every which way I look. How could one possibly start any sort of diet and waste such bounty?. So today I decided to help myself along a little and throw all the cheese scrag ends into an oh so easy and oh soooooo naughty Cheese & Onion Loaf. Though I should hasten to add I still have a quarter of a Stilton and an equal amount of a mighty fine aged local Brebis (Sheeps Cheese). So I’m still a long LONG way of the D word. Thankfully. So my apologies now to any dieters out there, and I would seriously advice you not to make this, as just the one, ridiculously calorific, slice will not possibly be enough. You’ve been warned.

Master Jacques giving the Cheesy Bread his all!

Finally it seems I have my baking mojo back. After endless freezer-filling pre-christmas baking sessions it’s been the last thing on my mind the last couple of weeks. But today’s a Wednesday and that’s a baking day in our house. The kids aren’t at school and I always try to bake something or other with them each week. Today it was just Jacques and I, as Big Sis was out with Mr F collecting wood. So we made a gloriously quick and simple yeastless and kneadless throw-it-all together Cheese & Onion Bread, that was all made in the time it took to put together a simple Pumpkin Soup. This cheese fest bread is the perfect accompaniment to hearty up a lunch time soup and particularly wonderful served piping hot out of the oven whilst the cheeses are still oozy. And you can literally use any cheese, or combination of cheeses, you happen to have in. I really did use up all our scrag ends, throwing in chunks of goats cheese, Manchego and Comte.

Leftover Cheese & Onion Bread

Makes one large loaf

a tablespoon of sunflower oil

a large red onion, finely sliced

450g of plain flour

a level tablespoon of baking powder

a teaspoon of English mustard powder

a large pinch of salt

a large pinch of black pepper

75g of butter, melted

375ml of milk

250g of leftover cheeses, roughly cut into chunks

Special Equipment: a large loaf tin lined with baking parchment

Preheat your oven to 200ºC.

Heat the sunflower oil in a saucepan and add the onions. Gently saute for 10 minutes until softened. Set aside.

Meanwhile sieve together the flour, baking powder and mustard powder and stir in the salt and pepper, ensuring everything is thoroughly combined.

Melt the butter and stir into the milk, then stir them both into the dry mixture. Finally mix in the cheesy chunks and onions and dollop into a large lined loaf tin.

Place in your oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden brown on the top, firm to touch and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

26 responses to “Leftover Cheese & Onion Bread”

Funnily enough have just made soda bread with thyme and leftover cheese in it to go with leftover quiche for supper tonight! I just used goats cheese though – like the sound of your cheese mix. Looks yummy and very cute pic of Jacques stirring.

So glad I’m not the only person stumbling over Quality Street and tripping over crisps and crackers at every turn. With the house reduced by the departure of the duo of student daughters, there’s only so much food one can get through in a day!

It looks so good and it’s yeastless?? How does that work? Is it very dense? Sounds too easy to be true – just throw it all together! My kid of baking for sure. Bookmarked and ready to give this one a go for sure xxx

Oh it is so easy and so unsophisticated, Jacques really did do all the stirring! It’s more like a scone or muffin mixture and uses baking powder instead of yeast, but baked in a loaf tin has the appearance of bread. And understandably pretty dense as you say, but with that amount of cheese it’s going to be dense anyways 🙂

Thought I could leave the feedback here too:
The bread was really nice and easy to make and the red onions make it really tasty and the cheese was oozy and nice and warm and I added ham because I have so much ham (last week there was a sale for ham). We had it straight from the oven with some spicy chickpea soup. My children really enjoyed eating it, they wanted more in the morning. Your website has great, homely recipes, I browse often to see what I can make. Thanks so much for stopping by!!!